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energy

Remember when Tom Hanks was in comedies? Ah, good. I see a few hands at the back. One of his most famous was “Big.” You know the one. Little boy makes a wish at a penny arcade machine to be an adult and wakes up as Tom Hanks, who then gets a job at a toy company.

In the film, Hanks is in a meeting where this guy is pitching a line of transforming toys that turn from skyscrapers into robots. Hanks tells the guy the idea is boring because no kid wants to play with a building. Now, I don’t know if what I’m about to say makes UPS boring or geeky, but we really enjoy playing with buildings. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with them. In fact, we’ve been playing with our corporate office since it was built in Atlanta, Ga., in 1994.

Our corporate office, despite being almost 20 years old, has earned Gold Status certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as well as the Energy Star stamp of approval for energy efficiency. You might wonder how a two-decade-old structure could hope to stay ecologically friendly. Well, let me give you the Behind the Music treatment on this one.

When Superman is your favorite superhero, life can be pretty lonely. Every kid besides me preferred Batman. Didn’t matter that Supes could fly and lift mountains. Batman had money, a fast car and a cool mask. In 2011 though, I think Superman can have the last laugh because he’s an alternatively fueled superhero.

Superman’s powers of strength, flight, invincibility and that rocking awesome heat vision come from Earth’s yellow sun. He soaks up the solar energy like a living battery and jets off for truth and justice with no pollution trailing that red cape. By contrast, the Batmobile burns jet fuel…Holy gas-guzzling, Batman!

Although the song says never to do it, UPS is tugging on Superman’s cape a little bit with the installation of solar panels on the roof of our facility in Lakewood, New Jersey. Located about an hour outside of the original Metropolis, New York City, the 70,000 square-foot package center has been outfitted with more than 62,000 solar modules on the roof contained in more than 1,000 individual solar panels.

A crowd of more than 300 UPS employees and guests welcomed President Barack Obama to the Landover, Md. UPS facility on Friday, April 1.

President Obama opened his speech joking to the crowd why he and members of his Cabinet were there, “I am thrilled to be here, proud to be joined here today by two of our outstanding Cabinet Secretaries, Steven Chu and Ray LaHood. We’re here today for a simple reason: Ray wasn’t home when they tried to deliver a package yesterday – so we thought we’d just grab it and be on our way.”

While tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, energy policy is no joke. We’re proud that President Obama chose to discuss his energy policy at UPS. During his visit on April 1, he’ll meet with employees and check out a few of the alternative-fuel vehicles in our fleet.

Like a lot of parents, I worry about keeping my child safe and making sure she eats enough vegetables. But I hadn’t really thought about air pollution until last February. That’s when The UPS Foundation announced a grant to help take the Clean Air Campaign’s No-Idling initiative nationwide.

Whether you drive a 40-foot big rig or a two-door Prius, fuel conservation is a concern for most anyone. With a fleet of 88,000 vehicles on the street every day, logging over 2 billion miles a year, the automotive engineers at UPS can offer motorists some solid advice for saving fuel.